What was today's highlight activity? What happens at our program? Come and find out!

Wednesday, January 21, 2015

It’s about Stones and Outdoors

Our local StrongStart centres are attempting to take our families outside more. We have decided to close our centres one day a month and hold our programs outside. Today was the day.
I decided that my centre would go to the beach. There isn’t much at the beach, this time of year, except stones so I planned around them.
The first activity was to build a rock tower. How many rocks are in your tower?
Finding the right rocks and balancing them took a lot of effort.
Our towers weren’t too high but we made a lot of attempts.

A second activity was to create a picture using stones, driftwood, seaweed
and sand.
A couple of families worked a long time with their pieces of art.
Making their own frame with stones then standing the driftwood upright
with decorations hanging off.

A third activity was a stone scavenger hunt.
The idea is to search the beach for rocks that are similar to the pictures.
This was a great activity searching and finding unique rocks. The children love collecting rocks and it helped them look a little closer. I wish I would have
brought some magnifying glasses.
They found stones to match all of the pictures except a stone shaped like
a letter of the alphabet.

Another activity, a favourite and easy to set up, was painting stones.

Using paint chip cards to find stones that are the same colour was our
final stone-focused activity.

A few non-stone activities.
Using tools from the classroom, kitchen and homemade we experimented
to see what marks they would create.
The cookie cutters worked really well. I’ll have to remember to bring
more for our next visit to the beach.

Painting on logs with water was another favourite.
Also going to get more water and taking some time to explore was just as
much fun.

I brought a tent to play in as well as a spot to warm up if the wind picked up.
It turned out to be a spot to listen to stories.
And of course we had snack with hot chocolate and apple cider.
One comment I heard several parents say was that they don’t usually think about coming to the beach in the winter time. Today’s outing may change their minds.